HIEJIN YOO 

Habit of Necessity

Artist Reception: November 9th, 5-8 PM
November 9th - December 17th, 2022

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“They who came to California were not the self-satisfied, happy and content people, but the adventurous, the restless, and the daring. They were different even from those who settled in other western states. They didn’t come west for homes and security, but for adventure and money. They pushed in over the mountains and founded the biggest cities in the west.”
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From
 

For Habit of Necessity, Hiejin Yoo’s first solo exhibition in Half Gallery’s Los Angeles space, she found adventure in Yosemite National Park, in her chosen home of California, all represented here in a series of twelve Technicolor canvases.

Yoo feels embraced by Yosemite and California as well as her travels to New York, memories from South Korea, and of course, her imagination. These all result in a body of work that serves as a dedication to her adopted home, the romantic relationship between the Artist and California solidified, hands meeting in joyful agreement.

The hands - the artist’s own – draw us in. They are ever present and simultaneously nearly invisible: white lines, a gentle hug.

Initially used to represent the longing between the artist and her husband as they were geographically separated, the hands have evolved into Necessities: a caress into the ease and bliss of the image on the canvas, keeping us here, holding tightly, allowing the viewer to lose themselves in the ubiquitous warmth.

This is the point, even in the absence of the hands: Yoo insists on the viewer finding joy in the paintings through her glowing palette presenting a beautiful femininity within a sense of a perfect nature, complete with titles insisting on love, on kindness, on unadulterated happiness: Nostalgia, Splendor in the Grass, Caressing Me, The Night We Met.

These paintings are snippets of a love letter; yellowed photos, handwritten poems and the butterflies of first loves. They give us permission to long for, to let us believe the fantasy as we stand in front of them, letting ourselves dream, letting ourselves go.

They’re glimpses of Yoo’s private intimacies, her home… and she’s inviting us in.

Hiejin Yoo (Born in Münster, Germany, 1987) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Yoo’s work has been exhibited at Half Gallery, New York; Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels; Spurs Gallery, Beijing; Kunstraum Potsdam, Berlin; and Blum and Poe, Los Angeles. Her work is included in public and private collections including High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Pérez Collection, Miami, FL; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami, FL; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Marquez Art Projects, Miami, FL; and Xiao Museum, Rizhao, China. Yoo hold a Master’s of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This is the artist’s first solo show in Half Gallery’s Los Angeles location.

For inquiries email erin@halfgallery.com